Greetings Stephen, what is Wu Yu Hsiang's Four characters,I don't know this term.And who is wu yu Hsiang, If you can introduce him, may be i can find some material for you

Wang Hao Da ,i guess may be spelled wuang an da, who lived in shanghai and died few years ago.He claim to be the linage student,but in shanghai,only four people was the direct linage student of ma yue liangs without wang a da.If the peole you mentioned is same to the people i said, i think you'd better read the book of ma yue liang himself.

Yes, the text Jerry posted is the correct one. Maybe I could do a translation of this later. The reason I say Yang Jwing-ming’s translation is partial is that he doesn’t include the last two lines, which I’m fairly certain belong to the original text. They include an allusion to the Mencius (Mengzi).

Regarding the four terms themselves, fu means "to spread," to arrange or array one's own energy. Gai means "to cover" the opponent's energy as it emerges. Dui means "to counter" or match the opponent’s movements in a focused way. Tun means "to swallow," or to absorb the attack of the opponent.

Ah, Jerry, I forgot about the T.Y. Pang translation. That one’s pretty good.

Louis,Did you analyze Hao Yueru's (Hao Weizhen's son) commentary to this text? There are a couple of phrases that I don’t understand. However it seems very interesting and sheds some light to the meaning of the original laconic statements of Wu Yuxiang.

Take care,

Yuri

[This message has been edited by Yuri Snisarenko (edited 09-17-2005).]

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This is pretty interesting stuff. For example for Spread, he has: "This means the two arms don't entrap, grab, or hold, but just spread over the other's body, and using qi spread on top of his strength, as light as steam, cause him to be unable to find the tiniest bit of power (li); by essence (jing), qi, and spirit (shen) threading throughout, cause him to have not the slightest room for movement and be totally unable to motivate (me)."

Hao Yueru fleshes out the original text in interesting ways, but to be honest, none of this is much use to the average practitioner. Most are still struggling with the basics and would be well served by trying to get a more concrete grasp of the ten essentials and notions like full/empty, silk reeling, etc.